To Reduce Unemployment, Slow Immigration

The November 4th unemployment report indicated that the economy is not producing sufficient jobs for the 300 million American citizens, health and that there is no end in sight to the crisis. This should make us ask why we need more immigrants.

All Republican presidential candidates are rhetorically against illegal immigration. But what are their views on the more significant question of legal immigration?

We know almost nothing. Mitt Romney has stated in one televised debate that legal immigration should be tied to the performance of our economy. The others have been disturbingly silent. We currently admit about 1 million legal immigrants into the country every year, for sale regardless of the performance of the economy. Why? One of the purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the current immigration statute, is “to preserve jobs for American workers.” I.N.S. v. National Center for Immigrants’ Rights, Inc., 502 U.S. 183, 194 (1991). The federal government is failing abysmally in its responsibility to do so.

I have heard no justification for legal immigration at a time of high unemployment. It’s not as if our economy needs more workers of a particular skill group to function efficiently. We don’t. The Department of Labor has said so for many years with regard to unskilled workers. And despite the statements of certain high tech executives about labor shortages, there are ample (and then some) technicians, computer specialists, and engineers to work in Silicon Valley. The unemployment rate for highly skilled Americans is only slightly below the 9% overall average.

Politicians can claim they favor “job creation,” but there is no consensus about how to achieve it. There is consensus among economists that an immigration moratorium would lower the unemployment rate by limiting the supply of job seekers. It is true that not all immigrants are eligible for employment right away. But that misses the point. They become eligible if they stay here long enough even if they work illegally. The Obama Administration (and its predecessors) is not enforcing the provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act which makes lying about being an American citizen a disqualification for future citizenship or lawful alien status.

Legal immigrants usually begin their sojourn to the U.S. with a visa, which many overstay. During their overstay they lie to employers and represent themselves as U.S. citizens to get jobs. The Justice Department should be asking every applicant for citizenship for their employment history, and then following up with a review of the I-9 forms for each job to see if the applicant ever falsely purported to be a citizen and presented fake documents. Most have. They should be out on the next plane. This would eliminate most applicants in the immigration queue.

The U.S. has international obligations to accept about 100,000 refugees each year. Under current law, the refugees must be employment authorized and put on the citizenship track. We can and should change this law. Refugees don’t need to become citizens and compete against Americans for low skill jobs. We could take them in, and return them to their home countries if the conditions there improve. And if they do not, the refugees should be required to live in areas of low unemployment in this country to minimize the economic dislocations they cause.

There is a large segment of this country, myself among them, that cannot understand why we have so many immigrants. It is simply unclear what the policy of mass immigration is supposed to achieve. In the last presidential campaign,Barack Obama dismissed us as as the frustrated residents of small towns clinging to guns and bibles. I live in Chicago and do not own a gun. Yet I question why this country needs more immigrants. And Rick Santorum’s statement that his grandfather was an Italian immigrant a century ago is no answer. Al Capone was terrorizing the people of Chicago a century ago too.

Immigration has its time and place surely, but nostalgia for a bygone era is not good way to make public policy. We are at least a century beyond the time when we actually needed more people to staff the industrial revolution. The fact that our economy cannot produce enough jobs for the country should suggest that we have an oversupply of workers. One way of looking at the problem is to demand more jobs be created. The better way is to limit the supply of workers, and it’s time the Republicans start actually reading the Immigration and Nationality Act.

55 Comments so far ↓

Actually, the unemployment rate for Americans with college degrees is 4.2%. So it depends on your definition of “slightly”.

Skilled immigrants are the only ones whom it makes sense to import at the time. Each skilled immigrant fills a six figure job for which there are no (or not enough) qualified domestic employees, that money is mostly taxed or spent, and that adds $100,000+/year in tax collections and aggregate demand for services of less skilled and less educated Americans.

Not sure if I buy this idea that we need skilled immigrants because they fill a need here in the job market. I agree with the basic premise of this article that immigration at this point should be looked at very closely. In addition, we should take a hard look at what our public and private universities do to support the growth of American talent and human resources. Are we really in short supply of kids who score well in science and math or are we just looking for money from any source we can find? Look at our top universities and you will see names that are clearly from Asia all across the board. Why are we educating our competition? We need to start thinking long and hard about this entire topic before we end up sending our highly skilled jobs permanently overseas to go along with all the lower skilled jobs we already sent them. I thought the bargain was to let them do the easy stuff and we could do all the heavy lifting, the work that only a highly educated “exceptional American” can do…

I’m not sure what happens with all those kids that score high on math and science, but, with rare exceptions, they apparently don’t graduate with STEM majors or end up in high tech.

I wonder if Americans outside the IT industry realize the degree to which the industry has been overtaken by immigrants. I work in a large Silicon Valley firm. In my immediate team of 15 or so people, there are, I think, 3 native-born American citizens. The rest are immigrants. My team lead is French. My boss is Indian. His boss is Iranian. The only part of the company that’s still mostly native-born is the uppermost management, where the median age is in the 50′s. And even there you see immigrants gradually taking over.

And it’s not quite the case of importing “cheap foreign labor” because I’m pretty sure that the median wage in this group is in six figures. It’s the case of not having enough domestic talent.

Quality engineering universities ie. Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, etc are producing enough CompSci, MechE, EE undergraduates to support the labor force. The shortage is in low-level coders and high-level postgrad (PhD) engineers and scientists. When I was in university, most of my professors and TA’s were foreign, but most of my classmates were native (i.e. White, Black, Hispanic, etc).

A discrepancy lies in the wages that engineering grads receive over their careers. Yes, you always hear about how engineers make the most out of all college grads, and this is somewhat true. If you graduate from an accredited program and start working toward your PE license, you can expect a starting salary of 48-65,000 dollars, depending on location, specialty, graduating institution, and other factors.

The discrepancy is that these wages level off pretty fast. Once you put in a number of years into the profession, you’ll notice your friends in law and finance making twice what you do, and your friends in medicine making three times your salary. The natural solution for many people is to get an MBA, and move into management. It’s often the case that once you reach a certain position, your firm will support you on this. Then again, a lot of people get engineering degrees, and don’t even become engineers. Some go to law school and become patent lawyers. Many go to med school and become doctors; the stats show that engineers and physics majors score higher on the MCAT than even bio and chem majors. Others get recruited by investment firms and financial companies – trading and arbitrage is becoming increasingly quantitative and based off of complex algorithms.

So, if you’re a bright engineering grad from a top university, would you rather spend your days designing somebody’s air conditioner in Indiana, or go make a couple hundred thousand as a trader on Wall Street? Keep in mind that you probably have a sizable sum of debt on your shoulders.

Maybe some of them are paid less. But the 4.2% figure (which would presumably be even lower if you exclude people with bachelor degrees in history, women’s studies, and art) means that the industry that hires those immigrants is essentially at full employment. At full employment, more people = more jobs.

The domestic supply of engineers is rather tight. I just saw an article recently that said that American colleges produce FEWER bachelors in computer science today than they did in 1985. Given that statistic, would anyone be surprised that major employers have to supplement their staff with imported engineers?

The right claims that even the smallest amount of red tap kills jobs to a massive degree. So, Foster, why would a company go through the hassle of an H-1B visa application for a skilled worker if they could hire an American citizen for the job with no hassle at all? According to Wikipedia, 117,409 H-1B visas were issued in 2010. Another 30K applications were rejected. Why are employers voluntarily submitting them selves to extra helpings of red tape, if not because they need to import skills they can’t find in the current labor pool.

My Chinese wife is a textile engineer with an MBA from Chicago University and 15 years experience working with dozens of textile companies in China. After getting her MBA she stayed on sourcing fabrics for US textile companies on an H1b visa, making only $45k a year. You cannot hire an American with that education and experience anywhere close to that price, so the $5000 investment it costs a company to hire an H1b (red tape) pays off in a short time.

Actually, I disagree. It says too much. As republicans attack education along with their christian lackeys, we see financial aid fall. We see the constant attack on “thin king” skills in order to satisfy the ignorance of the bible thumpers. The constant implications that teachers are bad, poor etc, that we must teach to the test and that test scores indicate that a student is either good or bad (re:Michelle Rhea) the constant cuts to pre school education and the vilification of early childhood education.

Hell, I could go on and on, be me thinks, you’d not listen anyway.

Goes right along w/ efforts by the right to demean Science, Government and the media. Accordingly, I think they’ve succeeded very well in your case.

Actually, I think the real reason Americans don’t seek careers in science is economic. A Ph.D. is 4-6 years of post-grad education and this is typically followed by 2-5 years of post doctoral training, paying ~$50K/year. Actual jobs after that are few and far between, and pay is low compared to other educated professionals. There is also very little job security, as academic jobs are dependent on securing grants to support research. Funding in some NIH programs is currently as low as 7%.

Not surprising that American students with interest and aptitude for science go into medicine.

Not surprising that immigrants are willing to fill in those gaps, but it is too bad that so many of them don’t get approved for permanent residency.

While we’re at it, why not restrict imported goods? Think of all the prosperity to be had by reducing not only the pool of available labor, but also restricting market choices to domestically produced goods!

“Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being over-turned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution — to “insure domestic tranquility” and ‘make us a more perfect union’? Or have we imperiled our union?”

Capital moves far more easily across borders than people do. So, money and money managers are free to find the best opportunities all over the globe, while most people are stuck with the opportunities at home, if there are any.

This is one area where “common sense” might go wrong: even though immigrants take jobs, they also spend much of the money the make, and thereby create more jobs to replace the ones they took. It’s not at all clear that limiting immigration will decrease unemployment–nor is it a matter of simple arithmetic.

Will those farmers continue to vote republican? My bet, they will. There appears to be a lack of connecting the dots within the republican mind. Their economy is affected, but abortion, racism and WASP mentally trumps reality. And so it goes!

If Foster actually cared about immigration reducing employment (which, as fatharpdavis points out, is a highly dubious proposition to begin with), he would be arguing for severe civil and criminal penalties on firms that hire immigrants who are here illegally. After all, as even Foster seems to be able to recognize, folks come here in order to work. (His ideological brothers-in-arms often claim that they come here to have anchor babies and get welfare, but Foster seems to be able to grasp that this isn’t what’s happening).

The instant there aren’t jobs, the incentive for immigration evaporates. And it’s a lot easier to dry up demand by going after folks who are in the system, with a lot to lose– to wit, business owners– than it is to chase down illegal immigrants one by one.

But today’s conservatism doesn’t involve rational thought about policy. Instead, it’s about an ever-shifting array of outsiders and enemies towards which conservatives experience deep emotions of resentment. Therefore, we get offerings like this column from Foster– which doesn’t have one word about how to deter businesses from hiring illegal immigrants, instead explaining how lying illegals are here to steal jobs from the honorable white citizens of America.

The other tell here is that Foster expends a paragraph on the perils of admitting refugees. Now, bear in mind, these are folks fleeing wars and persecution that are sometimes almost as harrowing as Foster’s Kafkaesque nightmare of having to pay an extra few hundred bucks to move because he forgot to read his new office lease (see: http://www.frumforum.com/res-judicata-i-want-to-sue-the-teamsters ). Strangely and atypically, Foster included a fact in his column: that the US admits about 100,000 refugees per year. According to the BLS’s release last Friday, the headline unemployment number includes 13.9 million who are out of work. If you’re really good at arithmetic, you’ll notice that the unemployment rate is not hugely dependent on that paltry number of refugees that we admit each year.

But Foster doesn’t care about policy (much less care about who these refugees are and why we might want to admit them). He cares about having groups to resent. Immigrants are not One Of Us, so Foster resents them, then constructs argumentesque columns to rationalize his resentments.

shecky, dubmod both got it.
Most immigration is family based, Forster can expect a hell of a fight if he attempts to restrict that. As Watusie pointed out 117,000 for a year is a blip, and with most of them being highly qualifed applicants they will produce far more in value than they will ever take away.
Lets also not forget if you stop international students getting advanced degrees in the states that would represent the largest brain drain in American history, all because a few simpleminded fools imagine that Americans will suddenly replace them. The US has about half of the Nobel prize winners yet the majority of them are not American born. Forster would kick them out.
It is simply bizarre.

Actually up to half of marriage green cards are fraudulent, and do we really need the brothers and sisters of amnestied illegal aliens coming here through family immigration? If this were publicized, family immigration could be cut in half without much of a fight.

If we didn’t have immigration we’d have a demographic problem that will be causing huge issues for the rest of the developing world including China. You can’t support a nation with a population that is on average 65, someone needs to work.

Census data shows Americans are having a replacement number of children, the US population would continue to grow even with no immigration, just at a slower rate. Also China won’t have a demographic problem since they have ended their one child policy.

Howard Foster – “a lawyer in Chicago” – is another example on FF of an poster who is likely not qualified to write on the topics they do (in this case economics) and it shows.

“To Reduce Unemployment, Slow Immigration”

Does the author of this post provide any evidence at all that this statement is true?

There is no evidence that either illegal or legal immigrants really take jobs from “Americans” or that they are significantly negative for jobs, the unemployment rate and labor markets.

In fact, almost all credible economic studies, without exception, say that immigration actually grows the economy and grows jobs and is good for the economy. This is a country built on economic growth driven by immigration. It continues to grow the economy today (particularly given the low birth rate) and not just 100 years ago.

One small example, almost half the patents taken-out in this country every year are by foreign born American residents.

At most, credible studies have said that low skilled immigrants put mild downward pressure on the wages of the lowest paid American workers, but that is even debatable and in fact is not necessarily bad for the economy or jobs growth.

It is funny that Republicans like to brag about the good jobs performance by Perry in Texas and how the Texas economy is the GOP standard, but Texas also has some of the highest levels of both legal and illegal immigration in the country. So how does that work? How can the GOP be against immigration based on their belief of it being negative for the economy, but then “their” state, Texas, is suppose to be doing so well economically even with all that immigration?

“There is consensus among economists that an immigration moratorium would lower the unemployment rate by limiting the supply of job seekers.”

Really, Howard Foster? Care to provide us any proof of this whatsoever, nevermind proving there is a consensus among economists? What a completely silly statement. You need to start writing for Redstate, where there is no proof need to make such grand statements, as you will not be called out for your shoddy work and ideas (as Redstate likes to ban and do not allow any decenting views. Freedom and free speech at work conservative style).

“Legal immigrants usually begin their sojourn to the U.S. with a visa, which many overstay. During their overstay they lie to employers and represent themselves as U.S. citizens to get jobs. The Justice Department should be asking every applicant for citizenship for their employment history, and then following up with a review of the I-9 forms for each job to see if the applicant ever falsely purported to be a citizen and presented fake documents. Most have. They should be out on the next plane. This would eliminate most applicants in the immigration queue.”

Question Mr. Foster: what percentage of immigrant applications come from people who are outside the country? Why not give us some facts and figures to back up your statements?

Take a read of a credible report:

“The Impact of Immigrants in Recession and Economic Expansion” by Giovanni Peri at University of California Davis

An illegal making $6 an hour and who sends 20% of it out of the USA creates much less demand than an American earning twice as much. Actually the Wall Street Journal studied the demand side, and concluded in only increased GDP by 1%; if unemployed Americans were doing those jobs it would increase more.

And another lightweight author is torn to shreds by the FF readers who demand that an argument have some actual backing. David should really steer these hacks away from this site and over to Redstate where their factless diatribes can be met with the adoring comments of spittle-chinned head nodders.

I come to this site because there are smart people with an incredible amount of knowledge between them … not including this or several other people who actually post. I think Davide should sign up some of the people who comment to write fact filled articles on realistic and conservative approaches to the issues of the day.

Georgia’s Secretary of State’s office is obligated to administer elections and investigate allegations of voter fraud. Brian P. Kemp, who is Georgia Secretary of State, said that Georgia’s elections are among the most secure in the nation, and we take every measure possible to guarantee the integrity, security, and fairness of our elections process. Election and voter fraud undermines the very foundations of our great state and country, and will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Then in the Liberal Progressive window or a leftist Democrat Congressman called Keith Ellison from Minnesota’s wants to impose on his state a slack election system and also on the rest of this sovereign nation. This moron has introduced two bills to impose the worst two aspects of Minnesota’s system on the entire country. This arrangement undermines election integrity and trust we used to share as citizens.

This Democrat “Same Day Registration Act” H.R. 3316 and its attendant H.R. 3317 would involve all states to allow unconfirmed voters to register and vote on Election Day. This would be outrageous enough and is mild compared to being infuriated by the second bill, namely “Voter Access Protection Act,” which would forbid states from requiring voters to show photo ID. Perhaps 25 years ago—but not anymore, when we have notorious groups like Acorn, caught using low-life’s collecting hundreds of thousands of registrations, which should have been flushed down the toilet. Democrats are out to win the presidential race, in any way they can—and have, as ACORN was prosecuted by numerous state attorneys for fraudulent voter registrations. Its federal funding dropped a supposedly dismantled, but however it has resurfaced in New York under a new name. To me and I’m sure to tens of millions of TEA PARTY members this is beyond incredulous, that any politician would try to destroy what little is left of our freedoms. Under no restraint H.R. 3316, in expelling all photo identification necessities, and H.R. 3317, that would allow people to walk into a polling station, register and vote straight away in all 50 states. GOD HELP US!

America can no longer support the poverty entering this country. If we don’t look after our own veterans, our own homeless, how we supposed to be the PPO health care for the world. This is an invitation to financial disaster, when large parts of the 16 percent living in poverty are illegal migrants and immigrants

Rep. Ellison states his proposals are needed to “curb voter suppression” and shield the rights of young, elderly and minority voters, except photo ID laws in 14 other states have been challenged in America and state Supreme Courts and plaintiffs have no evidence that a single voter would be disenfranchised by those laws. Perhaps Mr. Ellison should investigate the growing trend of illegal aliens or even permanent residence, either by being misled by registration canvassers or using ‘The Motor Voter’ bill to vote. This is extremely dangerous in very close races and has been prevalent in many states throughout the nation. Hopefully the citizens of Vermont see through this reckless law, and drive this unpatriotic fool from Montpelier.

The state of Georgia maintains a website for US citizens or any individual to inform the Secretary of State of violations in their voting law. In fact every American state should provide a website to report this serious wrongdoing, as it is undermining the basic foundation of citizen’s right to vote. This is not just a threat within a the polling stations, but where anybody could walk in and profess to be a citizen, Under bills introduced by Rep. Ellison brought to Congress or in his own state of Vermont would have irredeemable consequence to our electoral system. , One of the easiest documents to forge—is the absentee ballot. Outside of the influence of a Secretary of State’s Elections Division is easily compromised.

We already have almost indescribable problems with the illegal aliens side-stepping our borders, or slipping through air terminals. Every American state should power their politicians to supply a law, that every American has a government photo ID to vote. In addition today when our country is carrying a near 15 Trillion deficit, we need to start repatriating all illegal foreign nationals. When our elderly cannot find a seat in a clogged emergency room, as the hospital has become overpopulated with illegal parents and their children. That these impoverished people have no conception of the cost for a minor infection, an Aspirin or major treatment. That these are unfunded mandates, which include the education of their many children, is carried by the US taxpayers.

Overcrowded public school classroom, congested hospital emergency waiting rooms, is what’s seen above the surface—the massive financial costs are hidden below. Over a $113 Billion dollars is attributed to subsidizing foreign aliens, so surveyed by a Heritage foundation report.

No matter where these undocumented are from, they must go home. This is where Lamar Smiths E-VERIFY is so urgently important. The ‘LEGAL WORKFORCE ACT’ will shift the legal responsibility, over to the employer. They will be charged with insuring every worker fills in a I-9 form and identifies the recipient, who has been hired. That the business owner checks their ’Right to Work’ verification through the federal E-Verify process. Those who are ineligible can verify their lawful status, through appearing at the nearest Social Security office, to rectify any problem. Of course No Liberal associated newspaper pass this information, staying silent about any irregularities as they are determined to cripple any chance of this commonsense bill from becoming law.

Every American can do their part, to insure that ‘THE LEGAL WORKFORCE ACT’ (H.R.2885) and get to the floor of the House of Representatives. It’s the only way to get future satisfaction of saving the billions of dollars we give reluctantly, to illegal aliens. E-Verify–the bill would require 100% of businesses to begin using E-Verify for all new hires within 2 years and require all federal and state governments to check new hires and existing employees within 6 months. Although the official figures estimates there are only 11.5 million illegal aliens in the US, other reputable organizations exceeds this number by at least another 10 million. Of these 8.5 foreign nations have claimed a job unlawfully, while 22 to 24 million citizens and legally here residents are unemployed. These are non-agricultural numbers and this could be reduced by the immediate vote of ‘The legal Workforce Act.’

Unknown numbers of illegal families began departing Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, with the introduction of harsh policing laws and headed for other states with more flexible immigration laws—California and Nevada included. Sanctuary States will be overwhelmed, with economic illegal aliens, looking for free money and other easy accessed welfare benefits. Thousands of American workers are already replacing the illegal absconders, as business have no option but to look elsewhere for labor. The days of cheap illegal labor is over and so are the big profits they have for years.

There is no time to wait, as E-Verify must become mandatory, instead as it is now—voluntary. Hundreds of thousands of businesses are now hooked up to the electronic program and can now vet their workers. Businesses that are not using E-Verify needs to learn an expensive lesson of harsh fines, company profit confiscation and prison for hiring unauthorized labor. Rick Perry unlike most of the others, is true GOP establishment and not a member of the TEA PARTY leadership.

Citizens and legal residents must challenge the Republicans dominated House and insist on E-Verify. The ‘Ways and Means Committee led by Majority Speak John Boehner (R-OH) must adopt the Mandatory E-Verify Bill (H.R. 2885.) and should be bombarded with insistent voters. Reps. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.), Tim Johnson (R-Ill.), Reps. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) and Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) have cosponsored House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith’s Legal Workforce Act (H.R.2885), with new members to sponsor in the forthcoming wings. Not sure what to do? Go to NumbersUSA web site, where you can freely fax politicians or you can also can locate them through this phone number at 202-224-312; the Congressional Switchboard.

As of last Friday, November 4, 2011 currently has 54 sponsors and 32 co-sponsors.

Our freedoms and liberty are under constant attack by the Liberals, Democrats and even hard core Republicans, so that’s why everybody is fed up with the usual trash from Washington; ‘The Quid Pro Quo’ should join the massive population of the growing TEA PARTY. We must anticipate that in the 2011 Presidential race, the impending gubernatorial and state legislative elections in Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia will be electing governors. . In addition, 578 state legislative seats are available, with the majority of these in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia where the fate of politicians are in the hands of voters. ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE BEEN VOTING AND WILL IN THE FUTURE. Democrats are looking the other way, as this has been happening nationwide. We must be watchful of Congressman as Keith Ellison, who could cripple our voting system. Ellison would weaken our nation’s policies even more so, than the voting regulations are already so poorly enforced.

So much that is so wrong (you obviously didn’t study up on voter suppression by the GOP in Florida or the dismissal of Justice Dept. attorneys by Bush/Rove for failing to prosecute cases that had no evidence), but let’s take on just one of your outrageous statements for the moment.

“…when we have notorious groups like Acorn, caught using low-life’s collecting hundreds of thousands of registrations, which should have been flushed down the toilet. ”

ACORN was defrauded by people who were hired to gain valid voter signatures but instead faked them to get paid more. You’re advise that is that they “should have been flushed down the toilet.” Of course anybody who has any inkling about the situation would understand that doing so by ACORN would have be a felony under U.S. law. But (I hear you cry) if ACORN was on the up and up, and they got a bunch of trash voter registration cards they had to hand in, it would have been nice if they had at least warned election officials about their concerns. Oh, wait! That’s exactly what they did! They put a sticky on every single solitary voter registration card. But no matter. You believe that violation of federal election law is the proper behavior in this situation. Says a lot more about you than ACORN.

Further, how does having “Mickey Mouse” on a voter registration card subvert an election? Even if it got through, you’d have to have somebody show up trying to vote as “Mickey Mouse”. BTW, I used “Mickey Mouse” as an example for two reasons; a) it was actually turned into ACORN as at least one of the fraudulent voter registrations cards and ACORN flagged it and b) ACORN accusations always end up being pretty much Mickey Mouse bulls***.

If you are going to troll/cut-in-paste with this amount of fact free garbage, why don’t you at least give us a link to reference this crap. Is this from some racist or Minuteman website? This crap probably does not belong on FF, although all views are welcome.

“Our freedoms and liberty are under constant attack by the Liberals, Democrats and even hard core Republicans, so that’s why everybody is fed up with the usual trash from Washington;”

What exact freedom and liberty is under attack by anyone? Please give us some real concrete examples of where you liberty and freedome is under attack. Such complete crap.

If you have any proof of illegal voting why don’t you present it to the authorities or how about given us an actual real example of where you have seen all this illegal voting?

armstp, it’s the freedom and liberty to have a bunch of white people, and only white people all around you, any minorities will be low in number but sufficient to accomplish the most base of jobs, and then everyone walks in lock-step to the official’s edicts, saluting the whole time. I think.

Japan shut its borders to immigrants a long time ago in order to preserve cultural homogeneity. Now look where they are: 20 years of anemic growth and not enough young people to support the old people and retirees.

Actually one of the reasons for very slow growth in Japan is a lack of immigration. In fact, the problem has now been realized and the Japanese are trying to change that by allow more immigration and trying actively promote immigration.

The economic arguments for immigration have been well made already, so I’m just going to weigh in on a smaller, but still important point. Close the borders to refugees? Disallow refugees from citizenship? Are you insane? This goes against moral, historical, and economic sense. If we have even the slightest pretense to being a “Christian nation” as so many Republicans claim, we can’t simply close our borders to people in desperate need – mercy and sanctuary for the needy foreigner are woven throughout the Old and New Testaments.

Furthermore, the notion that they should be kept here in permanent, stateless limbo waiting for the mythical day when the hell holes they escaped from becomes safe for them again is laughable on the face of it. All that will do is help create a permanent underclass of non-native, increasingly ghettoized welfare recipients who are robbed of their dignity, prevented from assimilating to their new home, and thus prevented from becoming productive members of our society. It would essentially force them to become the welfare leaches conservatives decry.

And lastly, anyone on this board who is descended from Puritans, Jews, Eastern Europeans, the Irish, Huguenots, or any other refugee group should be ashamed to entertain the idea of closing the gates to others like them. My ancestors came to this country to escape war and oppression. So did at least one of yours most likely. Shall we now close the gates to the truly wretched and needy of the world because we’ve got ours? America is struggling economically, but we are a long way from being so poor that we can justify closing our borders and our citizenship to refugees.

Here is a funny story for everyone:
A Chinese acquaintance of mine works in IT, she came over on a student visa, and eventually got an employment green card. She is a team leader with quite a few Indian H1b’s working for her. You should hear her talk about how the Indian H1b’s are stupid, lazy, liars! In other words this immigrant complains about H1b’s even more than Americans do!

The Jordan Immigration Reform Commission recommended a US immigration level of 550,000 a year as being in the best interests of the USA, and this was when the economy was much better than it now is. http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir/.

Any argument for a higher level is based on emotion, not on a complete study showing benefit to the USA.

[...] do so. I have heard no justification for legal immigration at a time of high unemployment." To Reduce Unemployment, Slow Immigration | FrumForum Gumballs: Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs – Updated 2010 – [...]

[...] do so. I have heard no justification for legal immigration at a time of high unemployment." To Reduce Unemployment, Slow Immigration | FrumForum Gumballs: Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs – Updated 2010 – YouTube – __________________ [...]